Talk | On Techno and Art: Robert Hood, Arthur Jafa, and DeForrest Brown Jr.
December 07, 20242:00 pm - 3:30 pm
For tickets to Robert Hood’s DJ set, visit smartbar.
About the Event
Robert Hood, an acclaimed techno originator and founding member of Detroit’s Underground Resistance (UR) who created the commissioned soundtrack for artist Arthur Jafa’s APEX (2013), joins Jafa in conversation. They discuss the social, aesthetic, and technological relationships between techno and what Jafa refers to as a desire to create “a cinema capable of matching the power, beauty, and alienation of Black music.” The conversation is moderated by DeForrest Brown Jr., musician, representative of the campaign to Make Techno Black Again, and author of Assembling a Black Counter Culture (Primary Information, 2022), a comprehensive history of techno through a Black theoretical framework.
That evening, the MCA partners with smartbar to present a full DJ set by the legend himself: Robert Hood. Get tickets.
Access Information
CART captioning in English and Spanish is provided for this talk.
To request additional accessibility services like ASL interpretation or audio description, please contact us via email at [email protected] or call 312-397-4076.
About the Speakers
DeForrest Brown Jr. is an Alabama-raised, ex-American rhythmanalyst, writer, and curator. As Speaker Music, he channels the African American modernist tradition of rhythm and soul music as an intellectual site and sound of techno-vernacular expression. He has released three albums on Planet Mu: Of Desire, Longing (2019), Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry (2020), and Techxodus (2023). His written work explores the links between the Black experience in industrialized labor systems and Black innovation in electronic music. Brown’s debut book, Assembling a Black Counter Culture, was released on Primary Information in 2022. In 2023, he co-curated HOPE, an international group exhibition presented by Museion Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen, Italy, as the final installment of the TECHNO HUMANITIES trilogy. Brown is currently collaborating with Tresor on the meta-narratives for Cybtron’s Maintain the Golden Ratio (2023), Parallel Shift (2024), and beyond.
Robert Hood is a founding member of the legendary group Underground Resistance as a “Minister Of Information” with “Mad: Mike Banks and Jeff Mills. His seminal works on Mills’s Axis and his very own M-Plant imprint paved the way for a wave of stripped-down dance floor minimalism that directed much of techno’s path throughout the late nineties.
As he notes, “M-Plant is what I’ve always wanted to hear: the basic stripped down, raw sound. Just drums, basslines and funky grooves and only what’s essential. Only what is essential to make people move. I started to look at it as a science, the art of making people move their butts, speaking to their heart, mind and soul. “It’s a heart-felt rhythmic techno sound. M-Plant is just M. minimal.”
Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, MS; lives in Los Angeles, CA) is an artist and filmmaker. Jafa’s films have garnered acclaim at the Los Angeles, New York, and Black Star Film Festivals, and his artwork is represented in celebrated collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the High Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Luma Foundation, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others.
Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions of Jafa’s work include presentations at Luma Arles, France; Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland; OGR Torino, Italy; Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, Portugal; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark. In 2019, he received the Golden Lion for the Best Participant of the 58th Venice Biennale, May You Live in Interesting Times.
Related Exhibition
June 1, 2024 - May 18, 2025
Arthur Jafa: Works from the MCA Collection
Funding
Talk
Lead support for the 2024–25 season of MCA Talks is made possible by The Richard and Mary L. Gray Lecture Series through a generous gift to the Chicago Contemporary Campaign.
Generous support is provided by The Antje B. and John J. Jelinek Endowed Lecture and Symposium on Contemporary Art; the Kristina Barr Lectures, which were established through a generous gift by The Barr Fund to the Chicago Contemporary Campaign; The Gloria Brackstone Solow and Eugene A. Solow, MD, Memorial Lecture Series; and the Allen M. Turner Tribute Fund, honoring his past leadership as Chair of the Board of Trustees.
Exhibition
Lead support is provided by the Harris Family Foundation in memory of Bette and Neison Harris, the Zell Family Foundation, and Cari and Michael Sacks.
Major support is provided by R. H. Defares and Agnes Gund.
Generous support is provided by D. Elizabeth Price and Lou Yecies.